Pearl Harbor Spears, Jan F., and G. A. Sullivan. 1995. Relationship of Hull President Roosevelt declared December 7 “a date that Mesocarp Color to Seed Maturity and Quality in Large- will live in infamy.” As a term, “Pearl Harbor” has come seeded Virginia-type Peanut. Peanut Science 22: 22–26. to represent foreign treachery, the perils of U.S. isolation- ism, and of potential vulnerability of American military David L. Jordan forces. The specter of Pearl Harbor helped to fuel the Jan F. Spears nuclear arms race between the United States and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the twentieth century. But Pearl Harbor also constrained U.S. power. Robert Kennedy persuaded his brother, President John F. PEARL HARBOR Kennedy, not to execute a surprise air strike against Cuba during the 1962 Missile Crisis because it would appear to In the 1920s and 1930s, Americans had become strongly the world as “Pearl Harbor in reverse.” isolationist, many believing that America’s involvement in World War I (1914–1918) had been a political mistake. In Japan, the attack is sometimes viewed as the mis- Moreover, the Great Depression focused people’s atten- take that awoke a “sleeping giant.” Others associate it with tion on the economy. Against this backdrop, the U.S. a dishonorable period of aggression in the nation’s history. Congress had passed neutrality acts in 1935 and 1936. Though Pearl Harbor happened more than sixty The tipping point that rallied public opinion toward years ago, the incident carries a great deal of weight in involvement in World War II (1939–1945) came on American political rhetoric. Political analysts and media December 7, 1941. personnel compared the terrorist attacks on the United The Japanese leadership had sought to drive U.S. and States of September 11, 2001, to Pearl Harbor. While sim- U.K. forces out of Asia. To Japan, the attack on Pearl ilar in some respects, the Pearl Harbor analogy, along with Harbor was seen as merely a “strategic necessity”—part of other thinly veiled language such as “axis of evil,” permit- the grand strategy to secure the Pacific for oil shipments ted President George W. Bush to build support for the to fuel the empire’s efforts to dominate Asia. However, as War on Terror by framing it in terms reminiscent of history has shown, the plan backfired. World War II. In the attack, 21 American ships were sunk or badly SEE ALSO Hitler, Adolf; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; World damaged, 188 planes were lost, and 155 planes were dam- War II aged. In addition, 2,403 American lives were lost and 1,178 persons injured. Fortunately for the U.S. Navy, no BIBLIOGRAPHY aircraft carriers were in port. While the attack produced a substantial military loss, the main effect of the attack was Jespersen, T. Christopher. 2005. Analogies at War: Vietnam, the Bush Administration’s War in Iraq, and the Search for a to crystallize Americans’ public opinion against the Axis Usable Past. Pacific Historical Review 74 (3): 411–426. Powers. On December 8, 1941, the United States declared Prange, Gordon W. 1991. At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of war on Japan. Pearl Harbor. New York: Penguin. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had battled with Congress to expand American support for England’s struggle against Todd L. Belt Germany. But once Americans saw themselves as victims, resistance to entering the war melted away. German führer Adolf Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941, provided the linkage necessary to PEARLIN PERSONAL associate pro-war sentiment generated by Pearl Harbor to MASTERY SCALE Germany, and the United States declared war on SEE Motivation. Germany and Italy on the same day. Public sentiment toward Japanese Americans was low prior to the attack at Pearl Harbor, as evidenced by the 1924 Immigration Act that halted Japanese immigration. PEARSON, KARL The attack on Pearl Harbor sparked war hysteria. In 1942 1857–1936 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of 120,000 individuals of Japanese ances- Karl Pearson was one of the principal architects of the try, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. These people modern theory of mathematical statistics. His interests were removed from their homes along the West Coast and ranged from mathematical physics, astronomy, philoso- relocated to inland camps. phy, history, literature, socialism, and the law to 190 INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2ND EDITION Pearson, Karl Darwinism, evolutionary biology, heredity, Mendelism, physics, hydrodynamics, magnetism, electricity, and elas- eugenics, medicine, anthropology, and crainometry. His ticity to engineering students. Soon after, he was asked to major contribution, however, by his lights and by poster- edit and complete William Kingdom Clifford’s The ity’s, was to establish and advance the discipline of math- Common Sense of Exact Science (1885) and Isaac ematical statistics. Todhunter’s History of the Theory of Elasticity (1886). The second son of William Pearson and Fanny Smith, Carl Pearson was born in London on March 27, THE GRESHAM LECTURES ON 1857. In 1879 the University of Heidelberg changed the STATISTICS spelling of his name when it enrolled him as “Karl Pearson was a founding member of the Men’s and Pearson”; five years later he adopted this variant of his Women’s Club, established in 1885 for the free and unre- name and eventually became known as “KP.” His mother served discussion of all matters concerning relationships came from a family of seamen and mariners, and his of men and women. Among the various members was father was a barrister and Queen’s Counsel. The Pearsons Marie Sharpe, whom he married in June 1890. They had were a family of dissenters and of Quaker stock. By the three children, Sigrid, Helga and Egon. Six months after time Carl was twenty-two he had rejected Christianity his marriage, he took up another teaching post in the and adopted “Freethought” as a nonreligious faith that Gresham Chair of Geometry at Gresham College in was grounded in science. the City of London (the financial district), which he Pearson graduated with honors in mathematics from held for three years concurrently with his post at UCL. King’s College, Cambridge University in January 1879. He From February 1891 to November 1893, Pearson deliv- stayed in Cambridge to work in Professor James Stuart’s ered thirty-eight lectures. engineering workshop and to study philosophy in prepara- These lectures were aimed at a nonacademic audi- tion for his trip to Germany in April. His time in Germany ence. Pearson wanted to introduce them to a way of was a period of self-discovery, philosophically and profes- thinking that would influence how they made sense of the sionally. Around this time, he began to write The New physical world. While his first eight lectures formed the Werther, an epistolary novel on idealism and materialism, basis of his book The Grammar of Science, the remaining published in 1880 under the pseudonym of Loki (a mis- thirty dealt with statistics because he thought this audi- chievous Scandinavian god). In Heidelberg Pearson aban- ence would understand insurance, commerce, and trade doned Karl philosophy because “it made him miserable statistics and could relate to games of chance involving and would have led him to short-cut his career” (Karl Monte Carlo roulette, lotteries, dice, and coins. In 1891 Pearson, Letter to Robert Parker, 17 August 1879. Archive he introduced the histogram (a type of bar chart), and he reference number: NW/Cor.23. Helga Hacker Pearson devised the standard deviation and the variance (to meas- papers within Karl Pearson’s archival material held at ure statistical variation) in 1893. Pearson’s early Gresham University College London). Though he considered lectures on statistics were influenced by the work of becoming a mathematical physicist, he discarded this idea Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, William Stanley Jevons, and because he “was not a born genius” (Karl Pearson, Letter to John Venn. Robert Parker, 19 October 1879. Archive reference num- Pearson’s last twelve Gresham lectures signified a ber/922. Karl Pearson’s archival material held at University turning point in his career owing to the Darwinian zool- College London). He stayed in Berlin and attended lec- ogist W. F. R. Weldon (1860–1906), who was interested tures on Roman international law and philosophy. in using a statistical approach for problems of Darwinian He returned to London and studied law at Lincoln’s evolution. Their emphasis on Darwinian population of Inn at the Royal Courts of Justice. He was called to the species, underpinned by biological variation, not only bar at the end of 1881 but practiced for only a very short implied the necessity of systematically measuring varia- time. Instead, he began to lecture on socialism, Karl Marx, tion but also prompted the reconceptualization of a new Ferdinand Lassalle, and Martin Luther from 1880 to statistical methodology, which led eventually to the cre- 1881, while also writing on medieval German folklore ation of the Biometric School at University College and literature and contributing hymns to the Socialist London in 1894. Earlier vital and social statisticians were Song Book. In the course of his lifetime, he produced more mainly interested in calculating averages and were not than 650 publications, of which 400 were statistical; over concerned with measuring statistical variation. a period of twenty-eight years he founded and edited six Pearson adapted the mathematics of mechanics, using academic journals, of which Biometrika is the best known. the method of moments to construct a new statistical sys- Having received the Chair of Mechanism and tem to interpret Weldon’s asymmetrical distributions, Applied Mathematics at University College London since no such system existed at the time.